Keycloak - Identity and Access Management for Modern Applications: Harness the power of Keycloak, OpenID Connect, and OAuth 2.0 to secure applications , Second Edition

This book provides a thorough understanding of Keycloak, OAuth 2.0, and OpenID Connect (OIDC), delving into the intricacies of each concept and their practical applications. The author employs a practical approach by developing a simple web application to illustrate the implementation of Keycloak's OAuth protocol. Every endpoint and token is meticulously examined, ensuring that readers gain a solid foundation in authentication and authorization mechanisms.

I would recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn KeyCloak or get a base understanding of Access Management.I found this book to be a good read, and easy to follow with a lot of examples and walkthroughs!I found the baseline standards descriptions to be very clear and detailed. Later chapters provided solid strategy for deploying KeyCloak and understanding how to deploy most Access Management solutions.Finally, the authors gave enough information to provide extensibility. However, the only thing I think missing in the book was API integration. Driving how to incorporate external signals to drive Session Management or Authentication and Authorization flows to support a larger CyberSecurity effort!

Keycloak – Identity and Access Management for Modern Applications by Stian Thorgersen and Pedro Igor Silva, is a great book that covers the IAM tool. It is tailored for modern applications like single-page and mobile apps, and APIs. This is a tool that I have been looking forward to learning more in-depth about, and this book is a great resource. Chapters 2 and 3 were ones I found very informative. Chapter 2 of the book, titled "Securing Your First Application," explains the process of securing an application using Keycloak. This is demonstrated through a sample application with a single page and REST API. Chapter 3, titled "Brief Introduction to Standards," provides a concise overview and comparison of the standards supported by Keycloak. This helps readers understand how Keycloak facilitates the secure integration of their applications with ease

"Keycloak – Identity and Access Management for Modern Applications" penned by Stian Thorgersen and Pedro Igor Silva, thoroughly canvasses the intricate world of identity and access management (IAM) through the lens of Keycloak, a renowned open-source IAM tool. Having personally delved into Keycloak’s functionalities and features as an experienced user, administrator, and developer for its extensions, the book catered a blend of refreshing insights and elementary overlooks to me.The authors astutely break down the IAM's complexities, intertwining them with the Keycloak environment, which has evolved substantially since its inauguration as a community project.The book's encompassing nature brilliantly scaffolds across varied IAM technologies, such as OpenID and OAuth 2.0, offering an enlightening primer that proves instrumental for anyone—be they novices or experts—navigating through the manifold aspects of IAM solutions. Keycloak, with its budget-friendly open-source format, facilitates businesses to wield a potent IAM solution, enabling robust capabilities and heightened visibility within applications and systems.However, as an individual who has navigated the multifaceted corridors of Keycloak, I found the exposition of certain concepts sought a deeper dive. The writers indeed present most chapters with holistic examples, including requirements and downloadable sample code, thus providing a hands-on learning experience, which is pivotal for engineers and developers alike. The blend of contextual whys and hows certainly aid in comprehending Keycloak’s functionality, yet the desire for more lingered.One suggestion for future editions would be the incorporation of additional visual aids like diagrams or illustrative examples for some of the more convoluted concepts that sometimes prove elusive in a textual format. The practical application of knowledge is amplified when visual cues are utilized, particularly in complex concepts like scops, etc.Moreover, the book establishes itself as a valuable resource, providing a robust entry point for those initiating their exploration into Keycloak. However, for those deeply entrenched in its ecosystem and seeking advanced, nuanced insights beyond standard documentation and readily available online information, it may fall a bit short. This dichotomy suggests that a potential subtitle or indicator might be apt, such as "Keycloak – Identity and Access Management for Modern Applications: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginner to Intermediate Levels," to clearly communicate the target audience and depth of content explored within its pages.In sum, "Keycloak – Identity and Access Management for Modern Applications" notably serves as a valuable read for those new or moderately acquainted with IAM tools, keen to delve into the capabilities provided by Keycloak and similar systems. For seasoned veterans in the field, the book may proffer fewer new horizons to explore but stands as a comprehensive refresher and a testament to Keycloak’s journey and evolution in the IAM realm. The book indeed makes implementation comprehensible and accessible to all, yet leaves a sliver of want for more in-depth, advanced explorations into the tool’s expansive capabilities.J.K.

[Disclosure: I received a reviewer's copy as I have relevant domain expertise. I did not receive any compensation nor was my review vetted, so it is solely my own view.]As a preface to my review, my view is that this book is aimed squarely at those who want a pragmatic and practical guide to Keycloak best practices, ensuring a robust and production-grade deployment. Hence, it is ideal for developers and architects who want to make the most of Keycloak and do not already have an in-depth knowledge of SSO concepts. If you are looking for a compendium on writing Keycloak extensions, or deep theory on security protocols, this is not the book for you. That said, even if you are already familiar with the landscape more broadly, you will likely find some useful nuggets in this book.The book begins by outlining the basic premise of SSO, and the philosophy of Keycloak. In short, security is hard to get right; don't try to implement it yourself, it's far safer to delegate to a dedicated platform.At the outset, there is a quick-fire review of the essential concepts and protocols, enabling readers who have a technical background (but not necessarily security-specific expertise) to quickly familiarise themselves. If you are confused by seemingly endless list of standards and protocols, and want to understand how they all relate to each other (OAuth2, OIDC, JWT, JWKS, JWK , ... etcetera) within the Keycloak context, this publication is useful.Throughout, the content is direct, practical, and pragmatic focus, summarising the essential information to make good engineering and architectural decisions quickly. It is not prosaic or theoretical, but instead outlines a range of common scenarios and provides recommended solutions — and perhaps more importantly — explicitly tells you what not to do.For example, recommendations are made for web applications, native applications, mobile applications, and several other categories. For each, recommendations are made, and includes sequence and flow diagrams outlining the protocol interactions. Typically, several alternatives are also proposed for cases where the best approach may be impractical.Let's say you want to know what the best practices and correct auth flows for a mobile application, this book tells you exactly what you need without any rambling.A significant proportion of content is focussed on real-world operational needs and best practices. For example, there are chapters on:• Language and framework-specific examples and integrations, this is more tutorial style, and you will likely want to skip directly to the relevant section for your requirements (Go, Java, Javascript, Quarkus, Spring Boot, etc).• Customisation and extensibility, including visual customisations, flow and approval customisations, etc. Although, I would note that this is not aimed at developers who want to write complex extensions — this is primarily how to drive Keycloak's "out of the box" functionality.• Configuring a production-grade secure server, and tackling some common difficulties (such as handling proxies, internal vs external network, etc)In summation, this is a pragmatic guide to Keycloak for devs, ops, and architects. It is not aimed at advanced developers looking to write Keycloak extensions. It condenses together best practices into a single reference handbook that is ideal to get your team up to speed extremely quickly and ensure you are using best practices from day one.I hope this review helps!